Creative Content and Authentic Influence

Tribe is an influencer platform specialising in micro influencers, yet we didn’t build the platform to be about influence; we built it to be about content.

Brands need content. Agencies need content. Social media managers need content and when they do, it doesn’t necessarily have to be highly produced, stylized, and expensive to create. It needs to be real time, occasionally disposable, and able to fill differentiated requirements.

That’s the need that Tribe meets: enabling the quick generation of branded content at scale. Influencers are not just putting up their hands to participate in a brand campaign; they’re also creating the content for the campaign. Content is distributed through the influencer’s channels. This is the basis of influencer marketing, but the influencer has two roles: they’re creating content and they’re distributing that content to their audience. Each is a powerful value proposition, brought together into one transaction.

That’s the need that Tribe meets: enabling the quick generation of branded content at scale. Influencers are not just putting up their hands to participate in a brand campaign; they’re also creating the content for the campaign.

For the most part, the influencers on our platform are just like anyone else. We all consume brands and promote them whether we intend to or not. The car I drive, the juice I drink, the cafe I go to for lunch – these are all choices I make about where to spend my money as a consumer. And very often we share those choices on social media, whether it be Sunday morning brunch, the event we went to on Saturday night, or the new clothes we bought.

Influencers are no different. They share their brands and their choices, as they’ve been doing for years. With Tribe we’ve created an ability for people to continue to share those choices, and to monetize them at the same time.

We don’t seek to change the content that influencers are sharing with their audience. We have a policy of not distributing product samples, instead encouraging people to draw on their everyday behavior. When there’s an opportunity to collaborate with a brand they know and love, that’s when they can monetize. Influencers spend their own money on the product they’re endorsing, and if they’re not willing to do that, how could they authentically tell their followers to spend money on it?

Top-tier influencers expect brands to give them product for free and guarantee payment upfront. Our model has created opportunities for a tribe of people to collaborate with the mainstream brands they use every day – the Nutella in their fridge, the Corona they were going to drink on a Friday night. It’s a powerful yet simple concept. Marketers get it – “Of course we want people who buy our product to market our product.”

For brands, it’s the speed and sheer volume of fresh content that’s really powerful. A brand can put a campaign request onto the platform, and within a week they might have 200-300 pieces of content to choose from. Brands are accessing content cheaper and faster with much higher contextual quality, like the drink company that sourced over twenty different images of mojitos for a national billboard campaign, all generated through Tribe. Everyday people talking about the brands they know and love, not the brands that they’re financially incentivised to talk about, creates a high degree of authenticity and a high degree of engagement with their audience. It’s easier to access content through us than through engaging a creative agency which needs to build locations, film, and refine in post-production.

Now everyone with a mobile phone has the tools to be creative. There’s stop motion, animation, video editing, a twelve megapixel camera, dual lens – micro-influencers are pushing the boundaries of creative content because they’re committed to the products they use. For today’s digital requirements speed and authenticity supersede expensive production values.

Tribe is a content meritocracy; you have to put the effort in, you have to be the right influencer for a campaign, you have to create high quality content and price it correctly, and you have to submit it to the brand at the right time. When all those factors align, influencers get rewarded quickly and well. People are happy to apply themselves and go through the process of learning what works and what doesn’t work. They learn how to respond to brands and how to create more engaging content, because engaging content wins!

For brands, it’s the speed and sheer volume of fresh content that’s really powerful. A brand can put a campaign request onto the platform, and within a week they might have 200-300 pieces of content to choose from.

We get a lot of feedback from people who thank us – a stay-at-home mum or a creative person seeking a second income stream can access about 20 new brand opportunities every day. There are more and more opportunities to craft their skill, learn to utilize the model, and make money on the back of their interests and efforts. Changing the lives of our content creators is a great output of our business.

Although I’m the CEO of Tribe, Jules Lund is the founder. The roles of founder and CEO in our business are quite distinct. Jules over-indexes in founder strengths such as vision and creativity. He’s a great leader: strong minded, very charismatic, forthright, and speaks with conviction. He’s the visionary and creative force whereas I’m strategy and execution. Jules often seeks perfection whereas I tend to seek progress. We let the other drive where we’re most capable of driving, each of us absolutely committed to our mission which is to unlock the world’s creativity.

What Jules and I truly believe is that we’re not here just to build a company that gets flipped in a couple of years. We want to change the landscape for creative influencers and brands, utilising the power of authentic content from everyday people.

Decentralization through technology is driving many different marketplaces. We know where the world’s heading, and we think we’re at the forefront of the influencer and content creator space for brands. We built our platform to be globally scalable. We went into the UK nearly 12 months ago and now we’re looking at other regions closely.

Ultimately, over the next three to four years, we will increase our footprint in a way that’s right for us – rapidly, but also very tactically – so we can reach our goal to be the global leader in the decentralized content economy.